A stitch chart from a photo

A stitch chart from a photo

In New stitch chart, choose Start from a photo, then pick a picture (JPEG, PNG or WebP). The photo becomes a colorwork chart right in your browser: it is not uploaded, and no AI is involved. It is free, as often as you like.

• Frame it. Drag the box on the photo to choose the part to chart, and its corner to resize it. The box keeps the chart's shape, wider cells and all, so the picture is not stretched.
• Size. Set the stitches and the rows follow the box, or set the rows and the box reshapes.
• Colors. The screen tells you how many colors it found in the photo, then uses a small palette: 6 for crochet and 10 for knitting to start. Fewer colors make a chart that is easier to work. Detail keeps thin outlines; Smoothing removes photo grain; Merge similar colors joins colors that are nearly alike.
• Merges you can undo. Every merge is listed as "12 became" one color. Click a color in the list to keep it separate, and it comes back as a color of its own. Drag one swatch onto another to merge them yourself, lock a swatch to keep it exactly, or click it to pick a different color.
• Cleanup. Fix stray single stitches, avoid single-stitch color changes in a row (useful for crochet colorwork), and remove patches smaller than a size you choose. The screen says how many cells cleanup changed.
• Match colors. Match to a yarn line… snaps every color to the nearest colorway of a yarn line you choose (or of your saved yarns), so the chart is made of yarns you can buy, and the legend names each one. Pick more than one line to mix brands. Match to a chart… snaps to another chart's colors instead, and carries that chart's yarn names across. Stop matching goes back to the photo's own colors.
• Before / after flips the preview to the photo in the same frame, so you can compare.

Create chart makes an ordinary chart: every tool works on it, and nothing about it is special. Its cells show colors only; turn on symbols in Settings if you want them. The settings you used are kept with the chart, so Re-import in the chart editor starts from them (choose the photo again, since photos are not kept).

AI help (optional). Three switches can prepare your photo first. None of them draws the chart; they only change what goes into the steps above.

• Remove the background (Pro) cuts the subject out, and you choose the color behind it.
• Simplify into clean areas (Pro) groups the photo into areas so each becomes one color.
• Keep small details finds eyes, lettering and thin outlines so their colors survive.

Keep small details is Pro, and free accounts can use it with their three free tries: one photo import is one try, however many times you switch it. On a free account it carries the crown, and its note says how many tries are left. Simplify into clean areas is Pro only. If it can't run at the moment, the import says "Region simplification is unavailable right now; using the standard conversion." Your chart is made exactly as it would be with the switch off. A switch you turn on sends a smaller copy of your photo to the AI service, and the copy is deleted from your storage when you create the chart or cancel.